The IEEE 802.11ad standard defines an interoperable physical (PHY) and Media Access Control (MAC) layer that may be used to enable point-to-multipoint communication between nodes within a network. Wireless chipset providers are developing Complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) based baseband and Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) solutions as part of an overall Wi-Fi chipset product offering to enable low cost and low power solutions instead of implementing proprietary protocols and technologies in either field-programmable gate array (FPGA) or as custom application specific integrated circuits (ASICs).
The IEEE 802.11ad standard, however, does not support multi-hop mesh network based topologies. Despite the 802.11 standard offering mesh support for other 802.11 MAC/PHY layers (e.g., 802.11a/b/g/n/ac), the IEEE 802.11ad standard is associated with a directional beaming channel environment, opposed to a broadcasting channel environment. Accordingly, the mesh protocol amendment (802.11s) developed for the 802.11 standard could not be extended to support the interoperable PHY and MAC layer associated with the 802.11ad standard.